Shaftesbury has picked up the television rights to the young adult trilogy Wondrous Strange by Canadian author Lesley Livingston, with the goal of adapting the books into a one-hour drama series.

The Wondrous Strange series, which follows protagonist Kelly Winslow as she discovers she is the long-lost heir to the Faerie realm, was released in Canada and the U.S. in 2009. Wondrous Strange won the Canadian Literary Association’s Young Adult Book of the Year and the White Pine Honor Book in 2010.

Comparing Wondrous Strange to Orphan Black, Bitten and The Hunger Games, Shaftesbury U.S. head Maggie Murphy says she believes there’s more room in the market for this kind of series.

“Right now, I think there is such an appetite for it – [audiences] are looking for these strong, female protagonists,” Murphy told Playback Daily. The series also features a male lead character named Sonny, which Murphy said will help broaden the show’s appeal to both genders.

This winter, Bell Media announced that Bitten had become Space channel’s highest-rated original series ever, averaging 348,000 viewers per episode. In its second-season run this spring, Orphan Black almost matched it, bringing in an average of 337,000 viewers per episode.

As well, the supernatural-themed Lost Girl on Showcase has been a solid performer for Shaw Media across four seasons now, ranking as the channel’s number one program across several demos and ranking in the top 20 Canadian specialty programs in the A25-54 demo since last fall, according to a Shaw Media release on the series fifth-season renewal.

Suffice to say, there’s money to be made in the space.

The Wondrous  Strange novels skews towards the older end of the YA  demo – which by no means is limited to young adults – and is darker in nature, Murphy explained. She believes a series based on the books would be well-suited to a number of U.S. networks such as CW or MTV, and could also do well on non-linear platforms. The series would likely be shot in Canada, Murphy said.

Shaftesbury has produced a number of page-to-screen adaptations of books from Canadian authors in the past, including Dr. Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting and Other Cures and The Atwood Stories, a dramatic anthology series based on six Margaret Atwood short stories.

Lesley Livingston is represented by New York’s  Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc.